Let's Talk UNLV

Unknown Speaker 0:00
This is a k u and v studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and more the University of Nevada Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Unknown Speaker 0:19
Hello UNLV and welcome to another episode of Let's Talk. K You envy 91.5. Today I have a very special guest Miss Patricia Gatlin from HR. She's the talent acquisition coordinator and onboarding over in HR. Hello, Miss Gatlin, are you? I'm

Unknown Speaker 0:37
good. I just scales. Thanks so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here today.

Unknown Speaker 0:41
And I'm excited to have you here today. As we do we start the show with our guests telling us the origin stories Cook, can you please tell us how did you ended up here at UNLV? You know, where you get your, your undergrad? Your masters? And how did you ended up here?

Unknown Speaker 0:54
Right, right. So I ended up here I was actually a transfer student, my parents wanted me to be a little bit closer. So I transferred into UNLV in 2006. And so I started off working here I was a student assistant, worked in a couple of different departments, but primarily UNLV it and then also went to do a couple more other things, an intern externship type things. And then yeah, I got, I left UNLV once I got my bachelor's and went to get my masters at CSU DH Dominguez Hills, and eventually made my way back here to help develop out the medical school during a global pandemic for three years, I never worked in healthcare day in my life, but I appreciated the opportunity to be able to do that before Main Campus UNLV HR picked me up, and I've been with them for about two years. Wow,

Unknown Speaker 1:40
excellent. And I think it's very good that you mentioned you know, that you as an undergrad, you work as an undergrad also. So students can know that once they actually start working, you know, as an undergrad here, they can end up you know, graduate, get the masters and still be here at UNLV. And Nick can be here permanently. So it's very important to have you here, and I'm happy that you're from HR. So you can actually talk to us about how students can get started. Because every work is everything that you do when it comes to work, can count towards your resume and build your resume. So it's important that students know that, hey, I can start working here. And this actually counts for something, you know, other than just getting the paycheck. So can you describe for us your primary responsibility as a talent acquisition coordinator? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 2:20
my primary responsibility is obviously moving candidates through the pipeline. That means, you know, getting them into a candidate pool, which is enter requisition, and then eventually reviewed by a search committee. And then obviously, from that search committee deciding, deciding on the final candidates, and then moving them on to hire obviously, there's a couple of different things in between that process is quite a lot of little steps. But typically, that's what I'm primarily doing is making sure that we're hiring the right people to join our UNLV rebel family.

Unknown Speaker 2:51
Okay, so you started out saying, you know, remove a candidate. So could you tell students that may not know what a candidate is? How do you become a candidate what to become again, um,

Unknown Speaker 3:00
so we have a couple of different tracks. So let me talk about the candidates in specifically. So we hire for academic faculty, which is obviously our professors, assistant professor, so forth, and so on. And then we have administrative faculty, but we call them administrator, right. So that's all the admin support work that kind of goes into sustaining and facilitating our university. So that would mean I would hire from a AES all the way down to custodial workers. And then in addition to that, we have classified so our classified hires are our official state employees, right, that fall under different numerical titles and things of that nature that fall underneath the state. So those are the three different types that we hire. And then in addition to that, we also do like postdoc hires as well. And we also have things like Eloise, but in talent acquisition, we don't touch LOA that's kind of a co collaborative thing that happens with a different department. So yeah, that's kind of the idea of what a candidate is, is what which sectors do you fall into, in regards to what I listed? So when you do decide what track you want to take, right, oh, you say I want to be an administrative faculty member. And then you go on the UNLV Jobs website, you'll decide am I an internal candidate, or am I an external candidate, and then you will apply according to what you are. So for example, say you're a student assistant, still, you're your student assistant, but you're going you know, into full time work, right. So you're gonna most likely apply as maybe an external candidate if your profile is still not live. If it is still alive, you'll apply as an internal candidate, but either way you'll apply will merge your files and then you'll go on to select what type of job that you want to apply for within the administrative track. Or if you want to be faculty, which you most likely need a PhD for most of the times in our masters and PhD then you'll apply for that track as well. And then if you want to go the classified route, obviously, you'll look into the minimum requirements for that and you will apply accordingly. So those are kind of the three different routes outside of being an Loa, which is more of a contract employee. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 4:59
So the difference between from what I'm gathering internal external candidate internal candidate is someone that's probably already working for the university, right. And external is someone that, you know, looking for a job, no affiliation, and applying for a job that way. Or you can

Unknown Speaker 5:13
be a private worker, which is most student assistance, right? Or anybody that's kind of worked in that capacity, who's has worked for NCCIH institution, right? Because you can come from, say, used to work for CSN, you left CSN and you went to go work for MGM for a little while. But now you want to go back into the Enshi. institution. And so then you're applying as an external, and then again, we'll end up merging those files together. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 5:36
So what method and platforms do you use to source candidates, you know, for open positions, you know, to advertise or let people know, hey, this is what we're hiring for. So how do you advertise that? What platforms do you use?

Unknown Speaker 5:50
Well, our main advertisement is, of course, our UNLV website, which is basically through work day. And then we have other ones that we utilize, like indeed, so you can utilize that. Higher education is also another one that we use higher ed jobs. So we do posts on there as well. And then we have job ads or add quotes that people can request. So if they want to post on other third party vendors, they can request that throughout third party services. And so we post on there as well. We also do announcements now you want to be today, the newsletter that goes out, that also showcases our current open positions as well. So those are the typical avenues that we're at least making announcement. As far as sourcing goes, I'm primary talent acquisition coordinator that leads in that realm. And so I'm well sourced from anywhere, any website that's available, it could be LinkedIn, it could be indeed, it could be niche sites like GitHub or something like that. So it just depends on the department in which we're recruiting for is which I will sort source from, but if I can Boolean, search something, which is putting keywords into any search bar and search functions, and I'm more than happy to kind of, you know, Scout that website or source that website. So yeah, it's pretty much everywhere. And then of course, you have the digital version, and then you have the physical forms as well. So obviously, we will collaborate with like workforce development, we will collaborate with things like diversity initiatives, including like veterans, veterans, spouses, Hiring Our Heroes, things like that, and will attend job fairs. So that's kind of two different states, either in the digital space will do sourcing but also will be at a job for years in the in the physical sense as well.

Unknown Speaker 7:27
Wow. So there's tons of different ways that you can access these jobs, man, yes, very much that, you know, it reminds me of, you know, how far we've come with technology, because I can remember the day when you had to physically go out to these different places in Italy, and apply and fill out applications. So it's not like that anymore. And I think that's an excellent thing, you know, and you get to, you know, flop more jobs applications by doing it that way. Correct. Correct. So what are some of the biggest challenges that you face as a talent acquisition and onboarding? Here at UNLV? What are some of the challenges that you face? Right?

Unknown Speaker 7:59
I think our biggest challenge is always communication, right? We're hiring in those three different niche fields, right. And so each one of them requires something different. As we're moving candidates through the hire process. For example, we're doing faculty, we have academic affairs to go through, right. And so they have their own approval processes and things. And then, if we're doing classified classified is state, so state has their own HR handbooks and rules and regulations that we kind of have to follow on that side. And then with the administrative faculty, we also are very heavily involved in the EEO and the screening process of that and making sure that, you know, we are being equitable across all of those. But again, it requires the different steps and processes to go through the workday function to get a person hired. And so the most difficult part is communicating with a broad number of faculty, staff, so forth and so on, who are involved in this entire process. And so we're always trying to figure out better ways to communicate but also functionality, right, like, how are we getting these messages across? And how are we utilizing workday and are utilizing it to the best of our abilities? So testing and all that kind of things? But yeah, when it really comes down to it, it's all about process and strategy around trying to speed up that recruitment process, right? Because we don't want candidates to be idle. But and other things like you, you have to follow the rules and the guidelines of what a classified job and a state job. So there's not much space around that. And then even with Workday, it's also on a NCCIH system. It's not just tailored to you and Ovie. So then you have to get buy in from all of the InChI institutions when you want to make little changes. And so you think, Well, why can't you guys just change this little thing and speed up? The process is like, because it doesn't work that way. Our account is one account. So everybody has to be in agreements, because it affects all of these different institutions on that platform. So

Unknown Speaker 9:49
you've mentioned, I think, maybe two or three times about workday. Can you can you tell us more about what workday actually is because I know you know, when you're filling out applications, of course there is indeed Eat. There's all of these third party websites that you can apply on. Right. But you mentioned several times about workday. So for a person that have no clue about what a workday is, could you tell us what worked

Unknown Speaker 10:10
as a human capital management system. So basically, it houses all the data in regards to employees or even potential employees. So what you think workday is like an applicant tracking system is nice. It's really geared towards housing bulks of information about an institution, and its employees, and then the financial side and bridging that together so that everything runs in a cohesive way. So the back end of that you're able to run and process reports and kind of handle things simultaneously. The Talent Acquisition portion of Workday, kind of is a Applicant Tracking leading up to an employee profile, basically what it is, so it kind of funnels into that, but the bulk of it is a human capital management system.

Unknown Speaker 10:56
Wow. So and you mentioned also, there's like different jobs that, you know, candidates can apply for, like, whether it's a state or whatever type job. Now, how does that process work? When you're bringing in someone new to work in talent acquisition, like yourself, you say, you're gonna have two years? Is there an extensive amount of training so that you actually understand, okay, this is a state job, these are the rules I have to follow. This is a different job, I have to follow these rules. How does that process work for you?

Unknown Speaker 11:21
Well, I can really speak to somebody who went through there, there's an extensive kind of level of training now that goes into because you have to understand where a new team, a lot of us out, besides my boss, I'm gonna skip level right, had just started two years ago. So my other co workers that fall under the umbrella of me just started, you know, two years ago as well. And so yeah, you go through an extensive amount of training, of course, in your first 90 days, but in actuality, to learn every different facet of that, and still, you're touching all the other different departments in HR as well, you kind of become central, because you're the first point of contact in regards to a candidate. It takes it took me a good I will speak for myself, it took me a good year, and maybe two or three months after that to fully kind of get it get the flow, get the ebbs and flows of how the process works. So it does take time. And you do have to put in a lot of effort to do that. Because there's there's no handbook for what we're doing. So

Unknown Speaker 12:16
yeah, so it's kind of like building the plane as you fly it, basically, yes, you're

Unknown Speaker 12:21
very much building the plane as you fly it, I think, you know, as time goes on, and we start, you know, developing these SOPs and repositories and tutorials and trainings and stuff that we're currently giving, it will get a lot easier for the people that come behind us. But for me, it definitely feels like it's startup feet on the ground, which I have some experience coming from a startup background as well, having worked in tech and things of that nature. But yeah, definitely still feels new for a university that's a little bit a little bit more seasoned as time goes on. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 12:50
you know, in previous positions that I've had out, I came from San Diego State, like I said, in previous positions that I've had, you know, as time went on, when I was in different positions, I will give this a blank Word document and write stuff on how to make this process easier. For someone that's coming behind me. Is there something similar to like that, that you do? Sheets,

Unknown Speaker 13:09
where, um, I think we have our one on one team meetings, obviously, I mean, we have our, you know, key points of interest that we have given down to us from our skip levels that we kind of have to meet. But yeah, it's nuanced, right? It just depends on what we're talking about. So yeah, we'll kind of throw some stuff out there. But we have so many other things on our plate as well that we have to kind of limit it to what we can actually do in the moment. But I try to stay I think we all have ideations, and we try to put them out there as much as possible, or make sure that we're talking about them, you know, when our performance evaluation comes, because then we're talking about what what do you want to do next, you know, what is the key thing that you want to accomplish? So I think those are the times when it comes up, or when we're in that moment of frustration, and somebody says, Does anybody have an idea, and then you kind of raise your hand, and then you're like, hey, this is what I was thinking, and you hope that it might get picked up. And even if you do, you might not even be around long enough to city to see it executed. So you gotta be able to, to kind of release it and let it be what it's gonna be as well. So Wow,

Unknown Speaker 14:07
it sounds like this is a really great responsibility to be in in HR, and going through this process. So how do you make this a seamless way easy process for the candidate that's going through this process?

Unknown Speaker 14:18
I think that's something that candidate experience is something I'm very passionate about. And I think it is something that we are now starting to realize that we need more of, and I can't speak of it on a strategic level, because that is really fundamentally on my skip levels to think about and kind of pass down for me, but I think for me as an individual talent acquisition coordinator, when I'm talking to candidates is to educate them on the process, right? Because nine times out of 10 They're either emailing the wrong person, they don't know how to upload their resume or their resume is not that great at times, you know, and they don't understand the difference maybe between you know, the ATS system reading something and like how an academic resume looks versus you know, just the regular ATS chronolock logical resume might look. And so those are some of the kind of nuances and then also notification wise, like, where are they at, you might get a notification, you're in review, but you might be in review for a while, because they don't understand, we have a decentralized process. So us as recruiters are not interviewing you, we pass that off to the search committee that exists within the department. And so within that department, they have a better timeframe of when they expect to start interviewing, first round, second, round interviews, and so forth, and so on. So I'm always just trying to, you know, pace that give people a heads up on like, what that looks like, and how that's going to ebb and flow for them. And then as they get hired, also in the hiring process, reminding them of like things that they need to fill out and things that they need to do. Teresa, bear Clark is our onboarding specialist. So she's the primary person over that. And so we just try to help support her in any way that if the departments come to us and say, Hey, where's the candidate at in the hiring process, before they get to onboarding? Then we can tell them because sometimes they may be stuck if they're transferring from another institution. And we have to reach out to the other institution and say, Hey, did you initiate the hire on your end, and things of that nature, and that's why they're not already in onboarding. So there's a lot of different nuances and conversations being had before they even make their way to onboarding. But yeah, we try to educate them as much as possible, as much as possible on the flowchart of the way things are going to be in the hiring process.

Unknown Speaker 16:20
So what's typical for the hiring process from the from from start to finish? Whether it's a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month? What's the normal? And I don't even know if normal is the right way to say it. Because in HR. So So what's typical?

Unknown Speaker 16:35
What's typical, you know, the department will decide that they need a position field, they have a need, right? That will decide, hey, do I need to create a position or does the position already exist, and nine times out of 10, if it exists, they'll create a job requisition from that it will go through its approvals right? From its approving bodies before it makes it to its inbox with us as the recruiter. So that's the first time we'll ever see it, or sometimes even hear about it, because the departments don't call us and say, Hey, I have a new position that I want to open up, they typically call comping class, who are the ones who are evaluating these positions and making sure that they're up to standards. So by the time it does get to us, and it'll be assigned to us as the recruiter on business team force, I'm one of the only recruiters I guess I hire from the provost level all the way down to Custodio. And then I only have two academic department, which is Honors College and Fine Arts. And so basically, by the time they get to me, I'll go through, assign it to myself decide what is this admin faculty classify, and then put it in my head, Hi, I'm going to need to process and post this job requisition. I'm also looking to make sure they have all the necessary attachments to the requisition that are required, and then seeing if they have an add quote, that I need to request from a third party vendor to make sure that it's obviously advertised in the proper places. And then if everything is correct, I'll go ahead and include everything in the job requisition and then I'll post it wherever it needs to be posted. And I'm sending out confirmations to that business manager admin hiring manager, letting them know what's up, so they can go ahead and create a search committee. Once the search committee is created, they will do a search committee kickoff meeting with me. And that is basically a training on what it's like to be a search chair or to be a search member confidentiality agreement protected categories, bias training, how to access candidate materials and work day. And then once they've gotten that down, Pat, then they'll go through and start screening candidates, right. And so once a spring candidates, I'll get down to for classified, it has to be a minimum of five F available because if it's only internal, how do you have five candidates, but most likely that and then once they've selected, they'll do their initial round interviews this they want to do their final round, they'll reach out to us for EEO approval, we're screening candidates for minimum qualification, make sure there's no duplicate records, which is huge. And then from duplicate records and all that once that's processed, and everything's fine and work day, we'll move them forward to final rounds. The search committee will then say, let's set up final round interviews, the candidates will come in and do whatever final round of interviews that is, they'll then decide, okay, which candidates do we want to call for reference check, they'll do the reference checks on those candidates. They'll say, hey, I want to offer a candidate, you know, the job and then they'll either have to do with the files under the provost that have to do a request for offer. And so that has to be approved by the Provost Office. And then they'll enter the contract information. Once it's approved. They'll do the verbal offer, everything is agreed they'll push it through to work day. It'll go through its approvals again, right. For a start date, compensation, all of that it'll eventually do a conviction disclosure agreement with the candidate. It'll eventually make its way to me once the contract is, you know, completed. I'll review it. I'll hit agree, I'll send it to the candidate. The candidate will review it if it's right, it's right. If it's not, they'll send it back to me, I'll send it back to the department, then we'll redo it, and we'll send it out again, if all is correct. I'll hit approve for the candidate. They've accepted the offer and then I'll start to move them into the hiring process. So if the start date needs to change because the process took so long, there's 12 steps in the offer process. It happens, then I'll start working on things like that. If it wasn't internal, they need a staffing action change. So your job changes at a promotion demotion, what is it. So I need to let comping class and anybody else know that if it's from a different university, and then again, I'll just enter all of that and then move it to ready for hire, send an email to the hiring manager, and the admin saying, hey, this person is ready for hire, we're handing it off to onboarding it hits, Theresa, Theresa then goes through her process. And then they get ready a week before their start date. And then they'll go through all the onboarding things that they need to do. So that's pretty much the entire process without a couple of nuances here and there, because for classify, we have talent acquisition coordinators, we create the contract versus the departments. So that is one time they were a little bit more involved in, we have to make sure that the grade the step, the compensation is correct, because as you know, we're going through cola and things right now. So it is kind of nuanced year to year when it comes to classified hiring and making sure we're checking their website and everything is correct. And making sure like, if a person is from step 25, going to step two, and they were step one before and all that, we have to just double check it before we approve it. So those are some little nuances there. Well,

Unknown Speaker 21:12
one of the things that I heard you say is, you have to make sure that the process is correct. And the offer is correct. So is there a standard on the compensation for these different positions? You can't say, oh, well, the last person they I don't know. $80,000? So since we're getting someone new, they can't make 85. Um, yeah, that's

Unknown Speaker 21:28
all said by coughing class. So typically, it's listed within the job requisition. It's also posted on our website, there are kind of quarters and ranges to it as well. And so if they want to go over, then they have to do that request through, you know, obviously the provost office and get that approved, right, if the compensation is higher than what is already listed within the requisition, so yeah, there is that kind of, you know, you have to go back and get or approve of your offering more, or the candidate requested more, but you know, it's budget budgets are typically set right, by a certain time at the university. So all of those things are kind of pretty nuanced. But that is definitely more of a class and comp kind of conversation. And when we have those who always pass it either off to that department or somebody else higher up, okay,

Unknown Speaker 22:10
how do you department ensure diversity and inclusion? When hiring here for UNLV?

Unknown Speaker 22:16
Right? Um, well, there's a couple of different things that we try to do, obviously, we want to meet the need of the President has set for the university. And so in talent acquisition, and specifically, when they're going from initial interview to find out interview, we do do EEO screenings. And so basically, they'll send the information to, especially in regards to faculty, and we'll send that to the EEO office, and they'll do their approvals. And then they'll tell us this is approved, and then we'll send it back to the department and say, Hey, this is approved. If it's not approved, then obviously, your Eo Eo office will explain why it hasn't been approved and what they need to do to kind of rectify and remedy that also, hiring managers before they go in and look at candidates can ask for diversity information, we don't include names or anything, we just give the diversity of the applicants that have applied and so they must do that before actually looking at candidates. So that's another initiative that we utilize. And then obviously, you know, it's important for us to attend the Diversity Summit every single year, I'm going to I'm a certified diversity specialist, myself, I worked at Johns Hopkins. Also, I work in at UNLV. Medicine, and I sat on the board there on why work for my department there. And so it's a huge initiative for me when I'm sourcing is to, you know, providing them opportunities to go to higher ed for black teachers or Hispanic, Asian, you know, we are Asian and Hispanic serving institution. So to look at places like that. So those are just a couple of different things. But obviously, we're out in the community, like I said, we love did an event with hiring heroes, for military spouses and things of that nature. So there's a couple of initiatives that we're trying to utilize to implement best practices. As far as di goes, Wow,

Unknown Speaker 23:49
you are well equipped with your background as a diversity specialist in doing this. Yeah, that's excellent. What about other dudes? Like some of your co workers share the same same thing? Well, you know, they just attend trainings. Well, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 24:02
they attend trainings as well, as you know, look for tools and resources, especially when we're doing our search committee kickoff meetings, right. The biggest thing is questions, right. So we also have resources and tools on our website for search committee chairs in regards to accessing proper questions, right in regards to those protected categories. So one question we might get a lot of is like, Okay, well, let me execute it. Hey, what's your favorite color? And you don't think it's falling on protected categories, but that person could have a disability? They could be colorblind, right? They could have color disability on that spectrum. And so that might not be a good question X. Excellent candidate a question like, what's your favorite superhero? Is it really culturally appropriate because what if somebody is coming from an international overseas and they don't want to say something like Superman or Batman, because they didn't grow up with that as their hero, but you have no nuance for knowing the heroes that they had when they were growing up? And so again, little things like that, that you think aren't a problem are problematic can really fall on that spectrum of protected category. So I love being able to talk to you There are search committees in chairs about things like that fall in the gray area. So wow,

Unknown Speaker 25:03
that is excellent. You know, and that's something that, you know, typically we wouldn't think about, you know, it's so typical to have conversations and say, hey, well, what's your favorite hero? So we just think, of course, living in America, you know, the typical, like you said, Spider Man, Batman, Wonder Woman, though, those kinds of things. But there are people that live in other parts of the country that those things just don't exist. Yeah, they don't

Unknown Speaker 25:26
exist for them. And you don't want to make a candidate felt uncomfortable, right. And so you want to really stick to the job announcement, you want to stick to the PDQ, which is the position description that we we have as far as comping class goes and make sure that we're sticking to those essential functions and sexual duties within the job and so that they can answer those questions comfortable. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 25:44
just making an absolutely fair across the board. Exactly. That's excellent, equitable. So if, let's say if money wasn't an issue, what would you like to see for your department when it comes to bringing in new talent, and it comes from other departments and bringing in new talent? What, what would you like to see for that,

Unknown Speaker 26:00
I would like to see candidate experience grow. I think I'm huge on like, having a talent community. And having that in work day where people are interacting, and basically getting a newsletter and hearing from UNLV is in regards to what jobs that we have available, but also upskilling as well, again, I think us teaching and training, not just search committee chairs, but also teaching the general public about how to apply to UNLV. So that they're able to get the best result as possible, and just understanding our talent acquisition process and our hiring process entirely. And so if we had a lot more time, a lot more money, of course, we would be pulling our pipeline from, you know, beyond the end of pay 12. Right and senior year, continuing through the rest of UNLV. And getting them you know, excited about working here. So yeah, that's what I would like to see.

Unknown Speaker 26:47
Excellent. Excellent. So if a person wanted to look for a job and apply for something, what, how would they go about applying what website? Could they look at it, they want to

Unknown Speaker 26:55
UNLV jobs UNLV. Edu. Yeah, that's one of the jobs into Google and I promise you where they're gonna be the first link that pops up. And that's basically where you want to start and just look at the entire website, get a good feel for it, get comfortable, because honestly, that's what it is. Don't wait to the last minute to get familiar with UNLV. Show up, attend some of our events, you know, at UNLV in general network, and see what departments you really enjoy and the people that you like that you meet and then decide, hey, I think I want to work in this department. And then go and apply get a reference to we also promoting that our employees also use references and referring people as well.

Unknown Speaker 27:32
Excellent. Excellent. Thank you so very much for coming and spending some time with us. Miss Patricia Gatlin, talent acquisition specialist and coordinator over in HR, thank you so very much for coming to the show. Thank

Unknown Speaker 27:45
you so much Dr. Skills for having me and again, if anybody's interested in working at UNLV, please feel free to reach out to our talent acquisition team at UNLV jobs.edu.

Unknown Speaker 27:54
And that's a wrap.

Dr. Renee Watson 27:58
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